Print head assemblies of the kind employed in binary, continuous ink jet printing usually comprise, in one form or another, the following components: (1) an orifice plate having an array of orifices from which ink streams are ejected; (2) a manifold construction for supplying ink under pressure to those orifices; (3) resonator means for imparting vibrations to stimulate predetermined drop break-up of ejected ink streams; (4) a charge plate having a plurality of electrodes to selectively charge, or pass without charge, drops breaking up from the ink streams and (5) a catcher assembly to receive non-printing drops and return them to the ink circulation system for resupply to the orifice manifold.
These print heads are varied in size from full sheet-width arrays, to partial sheet-width arrays to a small size, adapted to be carried by a traversing print carriage to scan successive lines of a print sheet rotating on a print platen. For some printing applications, it would be desirable to have available even smaller print head assemblies. For example, in certain applications, such as multicolor printing, it would be easier to cooperatively position smaller print heads. The larger the print head size, the larger must be the carriage for mounting and moving it on a traversing printer, and the larger is the footprint of the print head in stationary or remote uses of the print head.